Three Boulder County arts, cultural groups may get zero grants

Council cites concerns over groups finances

Among Longmont projects under the umbrella of the St. Vrain Historical Society are Old Mill Park, pictured, and Hoverhome.
(Times-Call file)

BOULDER -- Concerns about the financial information and fiscal plans submitted by a trio of local arts and culture organizations have prompted a Boulder County advisory panel to recommend against awarding a metropolitan-area agency's grants to help the three organizations cover their annual operating expenses.

The Longmont Theatre Company had applied for $25,000 in Scientific and Cultural Facilities District funds. The St. Vrain Historical Society had sought $15,000. And Lafayette's Peanut Butter Players had asked for $10,000.

Those three organizations, along with 63 others, were seeking shares of more than half a million dollars in metropolitan-area Scientific and Cultural Facilities District funding that's expected to be available for 2012 awards to agencies based in Boulder County.

Under the Boulder County Cultural Council's recommendations, the subject of a Boulder County commissioners' public hearing set for Tuesday morning, 63 arts, science and culture organizations would get a total of $561,808 in SCFD operating-expense subsidies.

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What: Boulder County commissioners hold a public hearing on the County Cultural Council's recommendations for distributing nearly $597,000 in 2012 Scientific and Cultural Facilities District grants toward the operating expenses of Boulder County-based science, culture, arts and history organizations and for Boulder County performances or programs by organizations headquartered outside this county.

Longmont organizations that would get Scientific and Cultural Facilities District grants, under recommendations from the Boulder County Cultural Council, include:

ArtWalk Longmont: $3,700

Longmont Chorale: $5,000

Longmont Artist Guild: $700

Longmont Council for the Arts: $16,800

Longmont Jazz Association: $1,000

Longmont Museum and Cultural Center: $16,000

Longmont Symphony Orchestra: $20,000

Longmont Youth Symphony: $4,000

The Longmont Theatre Company, the St. Vrain Historical Society and the Peanut Butter Players won't be among them, if Boulder County commissioners endorse their County Cultural Council's recommendations -- and if the SCFD board, which has the final say, signs off on the council's and the commissioner's decisions.

St. Vrain Historical Society president Lois Dyer, when asked last week why the Cultural Council had reached a no-funding recommendation for the society, referred the question to the County Cultural Council.

Cultural Council chairman Barry Knapp said in a Friday interview that information provided by the St. Vrain Historical Society -- which has received Cultural Council-recommended SCFD grants in years past -- indicates that that non-profit corporation has been "running huge deficits, and they don't seem to have a credible plan to fix the situation."

"We have received grants in the past," Dyer said.

Most recently, the St. Vrain Historical Society, whose offices are in the Old St. Stephen's Church, 470 Main St., Longmont, got a $5,000 SCFD grant in 2011 and a $6,000 grant in 2010. Dyer said the society hopes to again get them in future years.

"We do great things," Dyer said. "We think we've been a very responsible organization."

As for the Peanut Butter Players, a children's theater organization that operates out of the Harlequin Center for the Performing Arts, at 990 South Public Road, Lafayette, Knapp called it "a great community resource" but one he said is "in over its head" with debt.

Peanut Butter Players didn't receive an SCFD grant last year but did get one for $5,640 in 2010.

Peanut Butter Players executive director Jo Anne Lamun said on Saturday that the Cultural Council hadn't notified about the no-funding decision for 2012. She said it was "a shock" to hear about it from the Times-Call.

Lamun said a sudden illness had prevented her from making it to her scheduled May interview with the Cultural Council and that the panel "wouldn't let me make it up later. They refused to let me come to talk to them."

Lamun disagreed with any contention that Peanut Butter Players is in the midst of any "rate of debt" or operating deficit difficulties. She said that since last year, the organization has renegotiated a lease to cut its rent payments by two-thirds, has reduced other expenses and is now "in a great financial position."

The Longmont Theatre Company, which received a $21,000 SCFD grant in 2008, got a thumbs-down recommendation in 2009, when the County Cultural Council said the company hadn't submitted all the necessary application materials. The company didn't reapply in the 2010 or 2011 grant cycles but did submit an application this year, after the SCFD determined it was again eligible to do so.

Knapp said the Longmont Theatre Company's past problems have included high costs associated with owning, operating and maintaining a onetime movie theater at 513 Main St. He said the Cultural Council, in reviewing the 2012 application, concluded that the theater company "is on the right track" toward achieving financial health, "but they're not quite there yet."

Longmont Theatre Company president Stephen Carver could not be reached for comment.

Knapp said the Longmont Theatre Company, the St. Vrain Historical Society and the Peanut Butter Players all make "cultural contributions to their communities." But he said the County Cultural Council "has a responsibility to the taxpayers to manage these funds" that organizations are seeking from the pool of SCFD money distributed in Boulder County each year, to question how those organizations propose spending those funds.

Knapp also noted that many of the Boulder County organizations that would share in the $561,808 in operating-expense grants that the council is recommending would be getting less than they originally applied for. Operating-budget grant requests totaled more than $846,000.

The most that any single Boulder County agency would get is $22,000. Under the Cultural Council's recommendations, the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra, Boulder's Dairy Center for the Arts, the Boulder-based Thorne Ecological Institute, Nederland's Wild Bear Center for Nature Discovery and Lafayette's WOW! Children's Museum would each get $22,000.

The Scientific and Cultural Facilities District annually distributes funds from a voter-approved 0.1 percent sales and use tax collected in a seven-county Denver metropolitan area.

In addition to nearly $562,000 in 2012 SCFD awards the Cultural Council is suggesting go to 63 Boulder County-based organizations for their operating budgets, the council has recommended distributing another $34,975 to 19 organizations headquartered outside Boulder County but that have proposed projects, performances, workshops or other events at schools and other venues inside the county.

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